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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29809833">Watercolor Edges</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/MagicMysticFantasy/pseuds/MagicMysticFantasy'>MagicMysticFantasy</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>A Deeper Country [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Chronicles of Narnia - All Media Types</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Character Study, Gen, Golden Age (Narnia), Once a King or Queen of Narnia Always a King or Queen of Narnia</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-03-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-03-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-15 18:34:54</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,688</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29809833</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/MagicMysticFantasy/pseuds/MagicMysticFantasy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Narnia changes her kings and queens just as much as they change her. It shows in every aspect of their mortal forms, and the Narnians know that their country is embracing its new rulers just as much as the young royalty are embracing them.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Edmund Pevensie &amp; Lucy Pevensie &amp; Peter Pevensie &amp; Susan Pevensie</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>A Deeper Country [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2191224</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>105</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Watercolor Edges</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/athoughtfox/gifts">athoughtfox</a>, <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/madnessiseverything/gifts">madnessiseverything</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This work is dedicated to AThoughtFox and MadnessIsEverything. Both of their writings and thoughts have inspired me to finish several of my Narnia stories finally, after years, and have inspired this story in particular. Thank you both, and I love seeing what ideas about Narnia and the Pevensies you have!</p><p>That said, to the rest of my readers, please enjoy!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>The new kings and queens of Narnia grow into their new roles slowly. The dryads and naiads raise them as they get older, and the animals teach them how to grow and gather food. The fauns and satyrs teach them both etiquette and fun, while the merfolk teach them to sing and swim. The centaurs and dwarves teach them battle and strategy, as well as how to persuade the earth to give up its riches and the trees to drop wood for bows.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Narnia gathers around her new rulers, helping them grow and learn as they get older and stronger. Her people hold them close and love them dearly, and their new kings and queens return that love in kind. They grow wiser and more capable, and it doesn’t take long before they are managing more and more matters on their own. As they embrace their land back, they begin to reflect it, too.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Peter’s eyes had always been blue, but several years into their rule their color grows clearer and brighter, reflecting the color of the sky above the northern mountains he rules over. All the while, his blond hair turns a paler gold, reminiscent of the cold sunlight filtering over the distant moors. When the Ettin giants began to push the northern boundaries, testing the might of the reborn Narnia, he leads a troop of his best warriors and strategists, disappearing into the Northern mountains for months as he forces them back.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>When he returns, the mountains have left their mark upon him. Peter returns tall - far taller than he would have had they remained in London, his siblings all suspect, vaguely remembering their short mother and average-sized father. The planes of his face had sharpened in his time away, and his gaze seems older and wiser as he watches over his subjects. His voice had grown as deep as the sound of water tumbling down the mountain cliffs, and his arms, legs, and chest have grown sturdy as anything that survives in the deep north of the world.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Everything about him is sturdy and steady, with an underlying wildness that slips through the cracks every now and then, and all three of his siblings are aware that Peter takes care to keep his new-found wildness tamed and under control.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Susan rules the south, with its glorious and radiant sun, as described by Aslan himself. As time goes on, her black hair begins to reflect more of the sunlight and her dark blue eyes grow warm as the rivers running through the southern hills in the summer. Her skin takes on a sun-warmed hue and her smile reflects the gentle sunsets they view painting the southern mountains gold and red. Her voice is as soft as the wind through the trees lining the hillsides, and she becomes known as the beauty of the family, turning many heads.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She becomes one of their diplomats for Archenland, their closest neighboring country, as she prefers to stay close to home when possible. She passes through the south of their land in stages, learning the southernmost forests and the bends of both the Archen River and the Glasswater Creek over time, growing as strong as both by swimming in each. Each time she returns home, Susan comes back a little different than when she left, and her siblings know what it is.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Her siblings also note the more subtle changes too, though others may not be able to tell. They watch as her words begin to layer themselves like the ancient bedrock of the south, allowing them to be interpreted as others prefer to decide. When she gets angry, they watch as she weaves verbal traps as treacherous as the winding paths throughout her domain, and as devastating as the sheer cliffs marking the boundary to Archenland. Her dangers are less obvious than her elder brother’s, but that is what makes her effective.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Edmund grows quieter after they are crowned. He’s more careful, cautious, and their caretakers have to work hard to draw him back out of his shell. The dryads have the most success - some of them having worked for the Queen themselves, and he finds kinship with them. Crowned king of the Western Woods, it is easy for him to follow them deeper into the trees, to sit and listen to their stories, to learn their histories and thoughts. His black hair begins to resemble the shade under the trees the longer he spends among them, and his dark eyes begin to look like the earth tucked between the tree roots.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>His words begin to come slow and smooth, as easy and long-thought as the woods themselves, and he becomes known among people to be as wise as the oldest oaks in the forest. His arms grow strong, climbing the up into the canopy after the laughing dryads and animals, until they are as sturdy as the branches he climbs. His skin grows freckled, dappled, under the leaves of the trees and the kisses of his dryad caretakers alike. He is slow to anger, but also slow to forgive, and his temper feels like the treacherous footing and stark landscape of a woodland that has forsaken its travelers.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He is quietly untamed, hiding behind wise words and intentional thought and movement. His siblings notice, but they are the same, so they love him for his wildness as much as they love him for his domesticity and all is well.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Lucy is unique among her siblings, being the only one whose domain primarily encompasses water rather than land. She spends her time with the merfolk and the nereids, dancing among the waves and looking eastward towards the distant islands that fall under her rule. Her dark eyes grow as golden as the sun on the waves and the sand beneath her feet. Her voice takes on a rolling cadence over time, a mixture of quiet rumbling and soft murmurs reminiscent of the waves coming into shore. Her skin becomes tanned from the sun, and as freckled as her brother’s from all the kisses the nereids and the occasional dryad bestow upon her.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She takes multiple voyages to the Seven Isles, and even to Peter’s domain of the Lone Islands, as eager for adventure as he is. Like him, when she returns she is different than before. Her walk is graceful and almost dancing, honed through weeks spent sailing over the waves. Her blonde hair grows as gold as the sun itself, and her moods begin to resemble the cheeriness of the water on the wood of ships. On the occasion when angered, her temper is as devastating as the sea during a storm.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The young queen is as wild and free as the sea, both in demeanor and spirit, and her siblings take great pains to keep it that way. She is as valiant in battle as her title, and they know that she holds the same wildness they all do, but she is also their youngest and they try to help her stay free for as long as they can.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The Narnians could see more of the changes to their rulers than the siblings thought. The ones who knew them best could see where the edges between mortal form and long-lasting land began to blur. For many of them, it’s a sign of Narnia itself embracing them back in a way that it had never accepted the Witch. In future legends, these changes get mentioned and some historians think they are hyperbole and metaphor. Others think they are truth, and it is part of why the reign of the four kings and queens gets called the Golden Age - for it is the era in which Narnia itself merged with her rulers.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>However, during the Golden Age itself, the Magnificent, the Gentle, the Just, and the Valient simply rule as best they can. They give as much love to their subjects as they are able to, and offer their enemies as much friendship as they can afford. When that friendship runs out, they protect their home and their people with all the fury and force of Narnia itself - and with them on the thrones nothing makes its way past the borders without them knowing it.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>(When they fall back through the wardrobe into their old lives and bodies, the world looks greyer, and it’s only then that they realize how much they changed in their time on the throne. Their hair and eyes seem dulled, and Lucy cries for days seeing her clear, unfreckled skin. Susan doesn’t speak for a week, her voice sounding harsh and coarse to her ears in comparison to its previous burbling, and Peter accidentally nearly kills himself one afternoon trying to carry something too high and too heavy for him then spends the remainder of the week seated in a chair staring into the fire. Edmund spends three days straight outside despite the rain, coming back only for meals and bedtime. When he finally wanders in from the nearby woods for good, he confesses quietly under the cover of night that the land itself feels dead to him now, and it hurts too much to keep looking and finding nothing.)</span>
</p><p>
  <span>(They find that their singing is still otherworldly so they force themselves to sing their mourning songs as quietly as they can, and a month later they find that their swimming is stronger than anyone else their age along with the other skills they learned while away. Their dancing, when they can stand to, is just as wild and captivating as they remember, and the one time Mrs. Macready catches them in their rooms, she simply watches for a long moment before leaving them to it. The Professor is the only one who really understands what they’ve lost, and he both urges them to tell their stories and leaves them in peace in turn.)</span>
</p><p>
  <span>(When they fall back into Narnia again, they immediately know where they are - their bodies remembering what once was, and returning to it again as Narnia herself welcomes them home by blurring the boundaries of their mortal forms once more.)</span>
</p><p> </p>
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